Call it love for yoga or an attempt to score brownie points with the centre, the state government wishes to carry on the central government’s yoga agenda beyond International Yoga Day on June 21.

The idea is to engage those who make the Prime Minister’s pet project a big success on June 21 as the torch-bearers—they will find open spaces, inspire people to gather there and practise yoga.

Corroborating the same, director of AYUSH

Navneet Kothari said that his department has already prepared a plan to engage people in the yoga mission.

“We will see to it that the yoga volunteers who come forward to help us organise yoga on June 21 be engaged to motivate people to continue practising yoga beyond the day,” he said.

Sharing the department’s plan the officer said the yoga volunteers would be asked by the department to engage yoga practitioners in their respective localities, form their groups and choose the parks nearby to practise this ancient art of the country as per their chosen time.

However, he made it clear all these efforts would be voluntary one as of now and government would not impose any instruction or order on anybody to practise it. Also, no honorarium would be paid to anybody for motivating people to do yoga or practising yoga.

“Once money element gets involved in the plan then there can be several problems”, he said.

Kothari said the objective behind the plan was to help people get maximum advantage from the ancient art of India which was possible only when it’s practised regularly.

There was space aplenty as almost every locality had a park. Hence, the same space could be used effectively for practicing yoga.

Notably, the state government has been organising yoga event annually on Swami Vivekanand birth anniversary on January 12 for the last several years.

Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan reiterated in December last year that yoga would be a part of school curriculum.

However, there has been no effort on the government’s part to engage common people in yoga round the year.

This is the first time when the state government is going to get common people involved in a continuous programme of yoga.